300–500 Threshold of Context Memory and Assumption Experiment

This chapter investigates the threshold of context memory on numbers 300 through 500 regarding perspective with assumption experiment and theories of cognitive semantics and short-term memory. Context generation became possible with text database with lexical engineering system on artificial intelligence (AI). It was realized an infinite and continuous presentation of context. Several context presentations realized the limitation of context memory on the process of continuous context presentation on numbers 500 and 2,000, as well as the representation process with judgement for memory. The first report studied the context generating machine for Japanese pun generation. This was termed “Class B engine” or “Dajare Machine.” This study focused on the examination of the context threshold using an experiment of human brain mapping on an auditory evoked magnetic field (AEF) of a magnetic encephalogram. It also focused on the analysis of the theory of cognitive semantics and folk biology, using a theory of short-term memory of the “magical number seven.”

The Folk Concept of Race

This chapter examines whether and how concepts vary across and within individuals (inter- and intra-individual variation) by examining what constrains variation of concepts. To address this issue, the chapter focuses on an independently interesting case study: inter- and intra-individual variation in the concept of race. The case study contrasts two competing hypotheses about the concept of race: the biological and the social hypotheses. According to the first hypothesis, the concept of race is a biological concept that is constrained by folk biology; according to the second, it is the concept of a social category. The chapter shows that people’s folk biology constrains the concept of race and thus limits how much concepts of race can vary within and across individuals.

The Roots of Racial Categorization

I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module (e.g. a folk-biology module). Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking.

Natural Language and Sub-Languages with Controlled Vocabularies

This chapter describe differences between natural languages and special-purpose languages, where certain words used to describe observed regularities and patterns, acquire over time specific meanings that differ from their ‘ordinary' meanings in the language. Folk taxonomies, encoded in languages of peoples who occupy narrow ecological niches, serve an existential need of encoding knowledge important for survival. While folk biology developed taxonomies based on the human sensory system, modern biology evolves by including observational data from molecular biology collected with modern bio-chemical tools – scientific ‘extensions' of the human sensory system. In contrast to general language, the controlled vocabulary in ‘specialist discourse', also referred to by linguists as ‘sublanguage' and ‘Language for Special Purposes' (LSP) allows specialists to communicate in precisely defined terms and to avoid ambiguity in discussing specific conceptual situations

The sacredness of the self, of society and of the human body: the case of a Finnish transgender pastor Marja-Sisko Aalto

In 2008 the change of sex of a Finnish transgender pastor attracted media attention to Lutheran Christianity on a worldwide scale, which compared to other religious traditions seldom makes it to the world news. This article­ discusses the sex reassignment undergone by Marja-Sisko Aalto, a Lutheran pastor from the town of Imatra, in south eastern Finland, who in 2008, at the age of 54, was transformed into a woman. First some remarks on the relation between religion and the body are made and terminological issues are discussed briefly. The second part of the article presents Aalto's life story based on the author's interview with her in April 2010. In the last section the author discusses the Finnish cognitive scholar Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s reflection on folk biology as an explanation for making sense of the public image regarding a priest’s gender. The article concludes by looking at Marja-Sisko Aalto’s case from the perspective of marking boundaries between the categories of the self, the society and the human body.